Phone Home - stage 4

 Have nearly finished the background but needed to make a start on the foreground as I wanted to work my way back to the background as I wasn't sure what colours to use. I settled on a very desaturated orange/brown with lots of the cloud colour mixed in so that the sky and landscape relate to each other. This is just the first colour pass on the foreground and will work it up tomorrow when the light is better in the studio in the morning. I am dabbling with the idea of adding a tiny bit more orange into the sky but I will wait until the house and lights are in first.

New colour used: Oxide Of Chromium

Phone Home -stage 3

 Probably finished the sky and background but stopped here as I need a think about the foreground. It was originally going to be grassland but I'm toying with making it more like scrubland with bushes - will decide over tomorrow's breakfast coffee....

Phone Home - stage 2

 First colour pass on the sky and background hills. I want this very cool and desaturated based on a red/orange - green/blue colour complementary with the green in the greys hopefully setting off the orange tints in the sky and the warm yellow/orange in the windows of the house. Might put a tiny hint of lemon in the sky...

Colours used so far: Phthalocyanine Blue, Phthalocyanine Green, Permanent Sap Green, Permanent Orange, Naples Yellow Reddish Extra, Lead Tin Yellow Lemon and Warm White.

Phone Home - stage 1

 Not particularly happy with the last painting so I'm going back to a moodier picture with dramatic lighting which I think is my stronger suit and might avoid sunny daylight from now on! Due to issues with compatibility between my phone and computer I am having to take pics with my compact digital camera so the quality is not so good with this pic but it will have to do....

This is the initial tonal underpainting stage using my usual mix of Burnt Sienna and Dioxazine Purple thinned with Liquin and applied with a rag and brush.

Oil on canvas 31 1/2" x 12".

On The Edge

 

The first painting for my solo show next year at the Abend Gallery to come out of my recent tour of the National Parks of the South West in the USA. I loved the vast scale of the landscapes and the big skies that hung over them and got most of my reference shots on the roads between the parks. Maybe because of the altitude (?) the contrast between the blue sky and the white clouds was so intense and I wanted to get that across in this painting, not sure I have and think I might leave the bright desert sun behind and return to the more familiar shores of evenings etc. The location in this painting does not exist (these are all kind of symbolic paintings) and is actually an amalgam of three different locations plus some imagination and invention. I'm fascinated by how people live in relatively hostile environments like this one somehow clinging on despite a lack of water, power and shelter from the relentless sun. You see individual houses or communities way out of town in the parched hills and land living in self-made buildings with seemingly no viable income source at least not from the land but every one of them has a car or truck parked nearby without which I am sure they could never survive. Living on the edge...

Oil on canvas 31 1/2" x 12".

There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.

On The Edge - stage 5

 Working on the land now and trying to work out the colours to use, I'm not used to painting sunny days! It's mainly complicated by the lighting idea I'm trying to paint of the area in sunlight at left contrasted with the land in shadow and the house when I get round to painting it.

New colours used: Permanent Sap Green, Brilliant Pink and Naples Yellow.

On The Edge - stage 4

 OK the sky is basically finished, I painted in some Lead Tin Yellow Lemon into the clouds which warmed them up a bit (can't really be seen in this pic). I also painted in some more sky and painted out some of the clouds to give the sky some space, it was looking too crowded.